It’s a comprehensive approach to matching the needs of your clients to the mission of your business and optimizing each of the various transactions that comprise the entire client acquisitions process.

We are experts at helping you formulate and execute this fundamental part of your business.

First, let’s be clear. Having a merchant account is a privilege for the merchant. It is not a “right” or “entitlement”. And with privilege, comes responsibility.

It’s important that merchants do their part to manage their business and merchant account in a responsible manner. In short, doing the right thing; preventing fraud, protecting cardholder data, issuing refunds as needed, minimizing chargebacks, etc.

Due to the nature of the card payment process, however, merchants are actually in the most vulnerable position by far, in comparison to the cardholder, and the provider/processor.

The cardholder makes a purchase with the card of their choice, and the merchant provides the product or service, in good faith expecting to be paid by the provider/processor.

The cardholder is in control by virtue of rights granted to them from the user and the associations (Visa/MasterCard). The cardholder is given the right to dispute a transaction for up to 6 months. Upon dispute, the cardholder is refunded immediately and the merchant is left to prove the transaction was legitimate. In other words, the merchant is “guilty until proven innocent”.

The provider/processor has control as they reserve the right to actually pay the merchant (sales less processing fees). Merchants are typically paid within a couple of days for domestic accounts, and within a couple weeks for international accounts, as per the merchant agreement.

The merchant is in the middle, seemingly with no recourse in the event the provider/processor fails to fund the merchant.

The merchant is understandably completely dependent upon the provider/processor to honor the funding agreement, but all too often, providers exercise their control and may withhold deposits for a variety of reasons.

In most cases, provider/processors do the right thing. But sometimes, provider/processors will abuse their power, either deliberately, or inadvertently, and the merchant is left with no recourse to get their funds.

That’s where we step in.

First, we always encourage merchants to try and resolve things with the provider/processor directly. If that fails, then we are there to give the merchant leverage, through a variety of avenues:

Education

Merchants can sometimes be coached in resolving disputes with provider/processors on their own. We encourage this and can provide consulting can provide consulting to merchants on this basis.

Reputation Management

Information is now at our fingertips. Businesses live and die based on their reputation. We live in a digital age, and we operate in a free market. If a provider/processor is

delivering poor service, the public, and authorities need to know about it.

We specialize in leveraging social media, review sites, the BBB, the media, the Electronics Transaction Association, the FTC, and our network of merchant level sales people and contacts throughout the industry. No one wants bad press or the authorities investigating them.